Different laws in force in Sweden’s Caribbean colony

Fourteen years ago, Fredrik Thomasson received access to a forgotten archive from Saint Barthélemy, in Aix-en-Provence. Over the course of several years, he and his colleagues have built up a digital archive, laying the foundation for research on the Swedish colony.

“When I started, there were two doctoral theses on the Swedish colony, one from 1888 and one from 1951. Two of my doctoral students defended their theses in 2016, so there is a lot more research now, but back then it was one big black hole,” Thomasson recalls.

On 21–22 November, a workshop was held in Uppsala on the theme “Caribbean Families and the Law: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance and Slavery”. Around 20 researchers gathered from countries including Denmark, France and the United States.

“I talked about how the Swedish state’s representatives in the colony tried – and failed to try – to manage issues of sex and family formation in court. Rape, extramarital sex, illegitimate children and other legal issues were dealt with very differently than in Sweden,” Thomasson explains.

Other laws in force

It commonly happened that Swedish men who went there had relationships and fathered children.

“The second governor of Saint Barthélemy, for example, owned a slave with whom he had a child and whom he then freed when he left. His daughter was given the name Anna Lovisa Ulrika, the same name as the mother of Gustav III.”

Another well-known Swedish nobleman was Robert Montgomery. He was sentenced to death for mutiny during the Swedish-Russian war in 1788. Instead of being executed, he was sent to Saint Barthélemy.

“He also fathered a child and named his daughter Ulrika Montgomery – he writes that he christened her after his wife in Stockholm. Montgomery was later pardoned and before returning to Sweden he gave the mother of his child a slave as a nurse and probably a small house,” Thomasson relates.

Role is not to judge

He emphasises that his role as a researcher is not to judge, but to describe how the system worked.

“When countries create colonies, the essential point of course is that they are intended to be different from the mother country. Slavery did not exist in Sweden, so different laws were needed to be able to earn money from slavery and trading in slaves.”

Many people wonder about the impact of Swedish culture on the colony in the Caribbean, but according to Thomasson this question is meaningless.

“Of course there are Swedish peculiarities, but in principle, Saint Barthélemy was like any other slave colony. Sweden didn’t arrive in the Caribbean until 1785, but after just a few years the legislation and the entire social system had been adapted to be able to earn money from slavery and colonial trade.”

Earned his doctorate in Italy

Fredrik Thomasson has devoted a great deal of his research career to Saint Barthélemy. After completing his PhD in 2009, he travelled to Aix-en-Provence in 2011, where the archive from Saint Barthélemy was held. He and his colleagues then spent several years digitising the archive, in cooperation with Uppsala University Library. In 2023, it became available for research.

The following year, he received an ERC grant to study Swedish participation in Caribbean slavery and colonialism on the island of Saint Barthélemy – a project that continues until the end of 2028. Four researchers are linked to the project here at the Department of History in Uppsala.

“There’s no end of things to do,” Thomasson enthuses.

Writing a book on the abolition of slavery

He reveals that the researchers in the project are writing a book about Sweden’s abolition of slavery. His colleague Annika Raapke Öberg is researching what happened to the Swedish slaves who were freed.

“We know that several of them married and made their children legitimate, because slaves did not have the right to marry. So one of the first things they did was to formalise their family relationships.”

Thomasson has written about King Karl Johan’s governance of the colony from his arrival in Sweden in 1810 until his death in 1844.

“He was closely involved in governing the colony. It’s now becoming a little more widely known that Gustav III was obsessed with acquiring colonies. When Karl Johan came to Sweden from France – where the colonies had been tremendously important – he tried to acquire further colonies for Sweden.”

Long involvement in the slave trade

One of the other people in the project, Victor Wilson at Åbo Akademi University, is conducting research on the Swedish slave trade and has a book about it due out next year.

“Sweden was involved in the slave trade long into the 1830s, despite having signed international treaties on prohibiting slavery as early as 1813–1815. Saint Barthélemy was even known as a good place to buy and sell illegal slaves.”

He shows on a map how the slave ships passed to and fro, between Africa and Saint Barthélemy. Three or four thousand slaves could be unloaded from a single ship and then sold on, for example to Cuba.

For a century, Sweden was therefore part of the dark history of colonialism and slavery. This history is little known, but Thomasson has played his part in bringing it to light.

Greater awareness in France

There is greater awareness in France. A memorial to the victims of slavery is being built there in the Trocadero Gardens, just across from the Eiffel Tower. Thomasson has been involved as a Swedish expert.

“An architect’s proposal has been presented and President Macron is keen to have the memorial completed before the end of his second term as president. A committee has been working for several years to find as many of the enslaved people’s names as possible in French archives.

“All the slaves whose names are known will be engraved in stone in the memorial. Several hundred thousand slaves were freed when France abolished slavery in 1848, and Saint Barthélemy will be among the places mentioned,” Thomasson says.

Annica Hulth